There is a referendum on voting systems in the UK next month. Personally, I do not think that AV is all that much better than FPTP; both systems fail to be proportional. On the other hand, the only truly proportional system would be to have every person voting on every issue, something that would be ridiculously complicated. So, I am placing myself fairly in the “Meh to AV” campaign.

What I do care about, however, is politicians (and others) misleading or lying to the public for their own ends. The AV debate has included an impressive quantity of “fear, uncertainty and doubt” (‘FUD’) being spread around by both sides – something that is not particularly surprising that the arguments for both systems are particularly weak. Rather than focussing on making a case for either side, in this post I am going to investigate the main claims being made by both sides. Read the rest of this entry »